Losing Sight of the Future
by Twigon Halolover
Summary: Random Inspiration!Bunny attack. This is a challenge/Prompt for any Harry Potter Authers out there, or you can view it as the first chapter of a story that, despite what the Status says, will never be complete. Unless an Auther adopts, of course.


Hagrid was happy.

Now this, as it was widely known, was not a particularly rare state of being for the large man. Indeed, give him an extraordinarily dangerous creature to pet and exclaim over, and the soft-hearted half-giant would be happy for months. In fact, many said that happiness was his most common mood, and that the statement of such was hardly anything to find surprising. Indeed, on a normal day this would have been completely unimportant.

But this was no normal day.

It was the day of Harry Potter's entrance into Hogwarts. People were excited; their hero, The-Boy-Who-Lived, was entering Hogwarts! Parents spruced up their children, the children were wondering what kind of friend _the _Harry Potter would be like, and the staff of Hogwarts prepared for the entrance of the children, each secretly hoping that the most famous child in Britain would be gifted at their particular subject.

Excluding a certain Potions Professor, who was currently emptying a bottle of Ogden's Finest at a truly alarming rate. However, as everyone knows, Severus Tobias Snape would never appear in public at anything less than his best, so we may assume that he had placed appropriate counter-measures against drunkenness and return to the rather curious subject of why Hagrid was happy.

Hagrid was happy because _he_ had been the one to give _Harry Potter_, of all people, his Hogwarts invitation letter! The boy was quiet, and never seemed to look anywhere other than the ground, but that had simply made it easier to navigate Diagon Alley. Truly, the boy must have been amazed at all of the wonderful things for sale, for he had almost run into several floating shop signs! With such a timid demeanor, no-one had recognized the Boy-Who-Lived, just seeing another shy black haired wizard off to Hogwarts. The shopping had gone extremely well, and Harry had been delighted with his birthday present, the Snowy Owl he had almost immediately decided to call Sophia. The wand that had chosen Harry was a bit… odd, true, but it was a wand, and therefore important enough to overlook small details. And now, it was only a few minutes before the boy would come in with the rest of his age group and be sorted. Into Gryffindor, just like his parents, no doubt! Hagrid couldn't be happier.

* * *

Dumbledore was musing over the mystery that was Harry Potter. The boy had grown up to be a quiet, mature child, if Hagrid's claims were true. If they were, this should have pleased the Headmaster, but it didn't, and he was extraordinarily confused as to why. Something about the boy's behavior rang warning bells in the Headmaster's mind, and most of it was centered on the extendable white cane Harry seemed entirely too much attached too, according to Hagrid's claims. Perhaps the cane showed a certain level or kind of status in the Muggle world? Indeed, it seemed useless as is. The boy simply tapped it back and forth in front of him while walking. Perhaps Severus had an idea… He would ask him after the Sorting. Speaking of, the new students were just beginning to come through the wide double doors that were the entrance to the Great Hall, and Dumbledore ignored the newest Sorting song in favor of examining the new students. Up in front was the newest Weasley, just as red-haired and freckled as the rest of his family. Standing right next to him was… Neville Longbottom? Last he had heard, the young Longbottom heir was incredibly shy. What had happened on the train to cause such a rapport between the two young men? Ah, he would find out later. For now, Harry was much more important…

There! In the very back, almost completely hidden behind Blaise Zabini was the youngest Potter heir. He was still staring at the ground, cane slowly tapping back and forth in front of him. The person directly beside him, however, caused a bit of a shock to the Headmaster. Hermione Granger, a promising young Muggleborn, was whispering into the Boy-Who-Lived's ear. The young man seemed entirely too absorbed with the words she was saying; the Headmaster frowned. They were entirely too young to be engaged in any sort of flirting! With the level of closeness they were sharing, it was almost impossible for him to assume anything else could possibly be happening. The girl had her hand on his arm, and Harry seemed to be gently leaning into her shoulder to listen better! This would not do! With an imperceptible wiggle of his wand in his robes and a quiet whisper, Albus was listening to the girl just as clearly as if it had been his ear she was whispering into.

"… and the stars are particularly beautiful- The entire ceiling was charmed to look like the outside sky, way back when the castle was almost finished- and there goes another cloud, though this one looks more like a furry goblet than a cloud-"

Quietly bewildered, the Supreme Mugwump canceled his listening charm. Why must the girl describe the ceiling to the boy when he simply could look up himself? If she wasn't trying to seduce him out of some bizarre respect for the Boy-Who-Lived, what was going on? The bad feeling was back, only a hundred times worse. The slow tapping of the simplistic white can looked like the swinging hand of a pendulum, slowly counting down the seconds- To what? He wondered- and the Headmaster felt sweat upon his brow as he strained to remember something- _something important, something HUGE_- about the cane, and the problem was on the tip of his tongue-

"GRYFINDOR!" When the cheering of the crowd broke him out of his concentration, and he tensed, trying not to grab for his wand and start flinging curses, because _these were children_, not Grindlewald's forces, and he was in Hogwarts, not Numengard, the war was over _and he had won and lost and won and lost and won and lost and oh Gellart…_

"The boy will end up an idiot prankster just like his father, I bet." Snape's quiet cynicism brought him back to the present as he ruthlessly suppressed those memory's while watching Harry slowly approaching the Hat, cane tapping back and forth and ba_ck and forth and back an_-

Albus tore his eyes from the cane as he looked over to Snape, trying to distract himself from falling back into the trance. Snape himself was angrily staring into his goblet, ignoring the son of Lily as he sat not ten feet away from him.

"Harry is only one-half James, Severus, and the boy didn't even grow up with his father." Minerva's voice seemed to cut through the tension, and Severus's head snapped up, halfway through mouthing his retort when his eyes locked onto the white cane by Harry's side and all thoughts of retaliation were abandoned. The blood drained from his face as he realized just exactly what that cane resting against the side of _Lily's son_ meant, while the few of the staff that had noticed frowned in concern.

"Severus, what seems to be the problem?" "Are you alright, Severus?" "Severus! Seve-"

The Headmaster ignored them all as the feeling of dread came back, worse than before. As memories started to click into place, and Dumbledore came to a horrifying realization, three things happened.

The Hat cried out "HUFFLEPUFF!," Harry lifted the hat off of his skull, and Albus's head whipped around to stare into Harry's bone white blind eyes.

* * *

Why did Harry name his owl Sophia instead of Hedwig? What was so special about his wand? Why were Ron and Neville so close? Why were Harry and Hermione so close? Why did Harry end up in Hufflepuff and not Gryffindor? Why is Harry blind? This is a challenge/Inspiration!Bunny that came out of nowhere. I will not be continuing this. Now, who noticed all of the clues for Blind!Harry before it smacked Dumbledore over the head like a trout to the face? I hope all of you, because if you couldn't figure it out, any kind of subtle fore-shadowing is going to go completely over your head. One last thing- Who else likes the idea of Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder!Dumbledore? I didn't even think of it until I started typing out Dumbledore's character, and it just kind of wrote itself. I may revisit this and expand this chapter till it looks like something that came from a reasonably respectable writer and not a 1,000 word chapter that I simply wrote and threw out there because the idea wouldn't leave me alone, but don't count on it.


End file.
